On September 25th, 2018, Moisés Obaco defended his doctoral thesis titled " Three Essays on Agglomeration Effects in Ecuador” supervised by Dr. Vicente Royuela and Dra. Alessia Matano.

The doctoral committee was composed of Dr. Miquel-Àngel Garcia-López (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona), Dr. Jordi Jofre-Monseny (University of Barcelona) and Dra. Agata Maida (University of Milan), who decided to grade the PhD thesis with an "Excellent” mark with the mention of Cum Laude.

This doctoral thesis studies the impact of the agglomeration effects on labour productivity and the slum formation in Ecuador. The thesis covers in a first essay, the identification of Functional Urban Areas in Ecuador, then it is estimated in a second essay the agglomeration effects focusing on the two most studied variables of agglomeration, total market size and local specialization index. Finally, the third essay focuses on city size and slums.